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California legislators have sent a bill to the governor’s desk that could push forward the development of autonomous cars in the Golden State. The new bill requires the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to adopt new regulations, including safety standards and “performance requirements” for new autonomous vehicles. Once those new rules are put in place, the bill “would permit autonomous vehicles to be operated or tested on the public roads in this state.”

The bill, known as SB 1298, unanimously passed the state senate on Wednesday, following a 72-4 approval from the state legislature earlier in the week. The text of the legislation says that autonomous vehicles “offer significant potential safety, mobility, and commercial benefits for individuals and businesses in the state and elsewhere.”

The lack of regulations certainly hasn’t stopped Google from testing its autonomous cars in California—the company said in 2010 that it had even allowed such a vehicle to drive down the famous Lombard Street hill, which the New York Times described as “one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation.”

Earlier this year, Nevada became the first US state to pass new rules dictating safety requirements for autonomous vehicles. The Silver State issued its first special license plate for autonomous cars to Google back in May.

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar